We finally meet again, IPPT Gold!

After scoring only silver for the last 2 years, regaining the gold standard this year was a especially sweet
Of course the extra $200 incentive helps a lot.

Ever since 2011, it has always been a mental obstacle for me to last the pace for the full 2.4km
Somehow I was like cheating myself, trying to fool myself into thinking that my fitness was still ok even though I had put on a lot of weight and not exercising as much as I used to.
For every 2.4km training run, I'll always only do the first 1.2km or 1.6km at the target pace.
The problem was that I did not push myself to finish the full 2.4km in every training run, always comforting myself that the remaining 800m to 1200m will take care of itself, especially since I used to be able to chiong for the last 200m which will pull back the timing.

How wrong I was!!

What doesn't happen in training, will have a very low likelihood of happening in actual races.
Adrenaline can only do so much. Stress and Fear will have a very negative impact, as evident in my SCSM2009 race.
Racing gives me adrenaline as I don't set a hard target that I need to beat.
I get far more stressed from trying to meet the IPPT Gold standard so that I can take the $400 incentive.

A series of events has changed the way I train and brought the confidence back.

It started from the second wind in SCMS2012 as a moment of realization.
From the second wind in SCMS2012, it gave me my first ever negative split in the MegaTri in Jan13.
The negative split in MegaTri gave me another negative split for the Aquathlon at a much faster pace.
Aquathlon gave me the confidence that my stamina is now ready to tackle ippt and bring the gold back.

Of course, the deliberate tweaking of my training runs to incorporate negative splits has helped tremendously in regaining my confidence in blazing through the 2.4km at full speed.

Next up will be the Duathlon, which may be a problem for me as I don't have much time to train on the bike from now till 2 weeks before the race.